


The First Year

by Wallwalker



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Ficlet, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 20:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/pseuds/Wallwalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first year is the hardest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Year

You spend most of the next year staring out of windows, the gravity on Earth too heavy for you to feel really comfortable after spending so many years in space. You go to the simulators, do your best to keep your skills honed, but it's hard when it feels so pointless. Especially when they give you the disaster sims, and the ship starts falling apart around you, and you keep flying in the simulated mass effect field around the cockpit and resisting the urge to look over your shoulder. You tell yourself that Shepard isn't about to step out behind you, in that old spacesuit, ready to grab you and pull you out just as the ship finally falls apart completely.

You're always right, of course; Shepard never comes. No one does. That's not the point of those sims; the point is to get pilots used to the idea that they might die up there, if things go wrong. That no matter how good you are, you're still in space, and no matter how safe the ships are, space is _not_ a good place to be when they fall apart.

Good thing, too, because you're not sure you could keep it together if someone did come for you like that. It's just too close to all of those bad memories. Way too damn close to watching Shepard getting sucked out of there, and you know damn well you were too far away to see the suit breach but you imagine that you can - all the air just flowing out of the suit, leaving one of the best damned soldiers you've ever known choking in the dark.

If you'd been a second faster - if you hadn't been too slow for the first time in your damned career - you could've gotten the Normandy out of there. You could've saved Shepard, the Normandy, the crewmen who hadn't gotten out in time. You could've done a lot of things if you hadn't been an instant too slow.

They need to give you a chance, you think, to prove that you won't do that again. You need to be up there. You need to fly. You failed the Normandy, and you failed Commander Shepard, and maybe you're never going to forgive yourself for that. But that doesn't mean you don't want to go back up there. Maybe you can save somebody else. You can do some good for somebody. But the Alliance doesn't want to hear it, says things about PTSD and conflicts of interest and keeps you down there on Earth, and it's driving you up the damned wall.

After a whole year of that, when the arrogant woman with the dark hair shows up and starts talking about opportunities and wasted talent, you don't look too closely at the insignia on her uniform. You're not sure you care anymore who you're working for. You've had enough time to sit in that apartment and drink and relive the past. You've got something to prove, and you're ready to go and prove it.


End file.
